


like a broken arrow

by tkreyesevandiaz



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Anxiety, Character Study, Crossover Spoilers, Eddie Diaz-centric (9-1-1 TV), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s02e03 Hold The Line, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Introspection, Light Angst, M/M, POV Eddie Diaz, Parents, Pre-Relationship Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Pre-Slash, Trauma, Worried Evan "Buck" Buckley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-06
Updated: 2021-02-06
Packaged: 2021-03-18 21:00:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,510
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29249922
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkreyesevandiaz/pseuds/tkreyesevandiaz
Summary: He thinks, just maybe, that three times is more than enough times to see helicopters crashing to Earth.
Relationships: Eddie Diaz & Eddie Diaz's Parents (9-1-1 TV), Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Comments: 22
Kudos: 157





	like a broken arrow

**Author's Note:**

> Man did I _struggle_ with this or what.
> 
> Anyway, have some trauma exploration hehe. This is rated Mature because Eddie's thoughts have a lining of darkness, and also his anxiety stretches throughout the whole piece. 
> 
> **This has spoilers for LS 2x03, the crossover episode**
> 
> TW: Anxiety, mentions of death, mentions of worst case scenarios
> 
> Thank you Felicity and Chey for reading this over for me and listening to me screech about it <3 Title from Broken Arrow by The Script

He thinks, just maybe, that three times is more than enough times to see helicopters crashing to Earth.

Technically, he’s  _ seen  _ two; the one he’d been in and the one where he’d just watched two fellow team members go down. The third incident had been a freak accident that brought Taylor Kelly straight to their station, the chopper going down during a morning traffic update, the 118 arriving after it had made its precarious landing. 

Eddie hadn’t felt the triggers then, probably a product of not actually seeing the helicopter go down as much as they’d seen it stuck in some bleachers at the Baseball Club. The focus he’d settled in to do the job had kept him separated enough from the situation that the looming anxiety didn’t crush him. There had been a brief, fleeting moment of panic for climbing into a helicopter for the first time after the Army — even if that helicopter wasn’t going to take off — but adrenaline had staved it off enough for him to do what was assigned to him and help the people that needed it.

The first time, Eddie was in the Army, on his second tour and far too aware of the unpredictability of being a soldier. He’d known that there were multiple ways to meet the end, so to speak. There were bullets and bombs and grenades and knives and all these other equipment that they went through  _ hours  _ of training just to learn, let alone actually use. The helicopter was just another one of the things they were expected to learn to cover all their bases — equipment they were taught to use only in the case of emergencies.

That’d been the knowledge he’d pulled to shut the rotors off during that call. That, at the very least, had been in his control.

Yesterday, nothing had been in his control, at all.

Buck, TK, Judd, Mateo, Marjan, Paul...all of them had been riding the high of getting Owen and Hen out of there alive. Hen was well enough to be back on her feet near immediately, which was another thing to be ecstatic about. 

As happy as he  _ was _ , Eddie had been more relieved than anything, and that relief didn’t really leave room for any other emotion. 

Internally, though, his mind is still trapped in the desert where his squad landed, alone and unconscious for hours. It takes every bit of self-control to keep the struggle playing from across his face where anyone could see him.

In the bits and pieces he recalls from the moment before the missile hit the helicopter rotor, it’d been stark daylight. When he’d finally roused, head pounding and body aching, it’d been dark outside. There had been no concept of time, only that it had passed, as it always does, whether he moves with it or not.

He remembers the hopelessness of waking up to seeing his whole squad in various states of injury, the pressure that’d mounted on him as the team’s medic. He remembers the surge of panic that’d propelled him to get everyone in gear, aware of being shot, distinctly aware of the possibility of the helicopter going up in flames at any moment.

They’d gotten very lucky that it hadn’t until every single one of them was out — Greggs included — no matter how many risks they’d taken in going back.

They hadn’t come out unscathed though — in no sense of the word. Every single one of them had gone back home with an extensive list of acquired injuries on their medical records, but more than that, they had gone home with the burden of what  _ could  _ have happened. All those  _ should have  _ and  _ could have  _ stipulations were a weight all on their own, tipping their balance and leaving them off-kilter like broken arrows missing their mark, even if all of them had eventually learned to shoulder it in the form of gratitude.

Sometimes, Eddie thinks he can still feel the blood coating the side of his face, grime, sweat and sand sticking to him like cement. In the months after the rescue, Eddie still couldn’t feel clean, no matter how many times he scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed. Nights like these, Eddie doesn’t even believe he made it out. 

Nights like these, those  _ could have  _ stipulations are all he has.

Eddie brushes a finger across where his St. Christopher medallion is nestled in his pocket, his lucky charm with him always. Whether he hangs it around his neck or tucks it in his pocket, it stays with him. It’s gotten him out of situations that, in principle, he probably should’ve died in — situations where the survival chances had been practically non-existent, the slim chance of making it out purely accredited to miracles. 

How many people can say they’ve come out of a 40-feet tunnel packed with mud, alive except for a few bruises? He didn’t even break a bone.

Eddie thinks that he has to be out of miracles by now.

Though, those near-death experiences, even after making it out, can trap the mind in unpredictable ways that make one wonder if it would’ve been better if...if things had gone differently. They can send someone to a very bad place, if they were so inclined to follow. 

In the darker moments, it’s easy to get lost in finding a purpose for still being here, for still having days ahead of them to fill while others’ don’t. Eddie’s purpose has always been his family, the reason he keeps filling his days, keeps putting one foot in front of another.

Stuck in the back seat, Buck drooling on his shoulder as they speed down the highway towards El Paso, Eddie can’t think of anything else. These idle hours of doing nothing have taken his anxiety and ramped it up to the point where he can see it manifest in other parts of his body. The leg without Buck’s arm spilling over it won’t stop bouncing, he can’t stop picking at the skin of his nails, and his skin feels too tight around him.

Instead, he takes to counting people for a millionth time, taking stock of all of them being well and sound. Hen’s sleeping in the front seat, her jacket wrapped around her tightly. Eddie makes a mental note to run through her vitals one more time when they stop, still feeling his stomach plummeting at the sight of the helicopter.

Jonah, Neil and Jacobs are knocked out next to them, snores reverberating through the truck. They’d caught some nasty burns despite the fire protection, and the stiff way some of them are holding themselves even in sleep speaks of it. Eve’s in the driver’s seat, tapping along to the low rhythm of the radio that thankfully isn’t reaching Eddie in the back.

He doesn’t think he can handle any more noise with the low thrumming of his thoughts in his head. Every little shift in the air feels like it’s grating on his nerves, but Eddie grits his teeth and pushes his irritation down. They have only a couple of hours before they reach his parent’s house. They’re not in any rush to get back to LA, so Eddie had asked Bobby if it was okay for them to spend a few hours eating actual food before they make the longest leg of the trip.

If he’s honest, he needs the time to calm himself down before climbing behind the wheel, whenever his turn comes, and if he sits in here for the whole twenty hours, he’s going to bite through his tongue with how hard it’s clamped between his teeth.

Buck lets out a snort in his sleep, shifting to rest more comfortably on Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie’s thoughts turn to him.

Stealing a firetruck to blindly find a helicopter in the middle of a wildfire had been the most halfcocked, stupid, dumbass plan Buck had ever thought of — and there’d been a  _ lot  _ of those. TK had been desperate enough, understandably, to go against central command and hunt for his father, but stealing a firetruck had Buck’s name written all over it. 

Not only has he done it before — both the recklessness and the firetruck theft — but Eddie’s been on the receiving end of how far Buck could go for the people he loves, and he knows that to Buck, his career, his own life...none of it meant anything in front of bringing Hen back safe and sound. Consequences are not something Buck factors into his decisions when it comes to saves like these.

As terrified as the thought of losing Buck makes him, Eddie thinks that people tend to take his impulsivity as a weakness, but it’s actually one of his biggest strengths. He may not think things through completely, but Buck is far more versed in thinking on the spot and out of the box than any of them. He sees things from ways that no one would ever consider in their wildest dreams, and more times than not, they’re the ones that change the game.

Despite having full faith in Buck’s capabilities, in all honesty, Eddie had panicked the minute he hadn’t seen Buck anywhere around, knowing in his blood that the man was about to do something stupid. Then he’d heard Paul and Judd calling out for TK, and the horrible feeling cemented itself in stone, Eddie’s heart kicking into gear as soon as realization hit. 

He can’t say that he hadn’t been thinking the same thing. The commander was moving way too slow, and with too many presumptions that kept the worst case scenario hanging above their heads. When TK had stormed out, Eddie had caught Buck’s expression too, practically seeing the gears in his head turning at light speed. He should’ve known right there and then that they were going to be faced with another impulsive situation.

After the well, Hen had told them that Bobby had pushed the limits as far as he could even when the higher-ups had wanted to stop. The problem here was that the captain who would’ve done that was stuck somewhere else; he was one of the people that needed saving in the first place. But Judd was just as good as any, and within the same minute, they’d assembled their team and were off, consequences be damned.

In the moment, nothing mattered but finding Hen and Owen. After, it was about getting them out alive. But after  _ that _ ? Eddie isn’t quite sure what to do with himself now that the adrenaline rush, fear, and constant alertness are catching up to him. The focus that’d kept him in the moment has faded completely by now, leaving him simultaneously drained and unable to sleep.

A hand settling on his bouncing knee startles him out of his thoughts, and he turns to find Buck staring at him. He didn’t even notice that the man had woken up and shifted off his shoulder at some point. 

“What’s wrong?” Buck whispers, scooting closer so no one could hear them, voice low and rough from sleep. 

“You drooled on me,” Eddie replies instead, gesturing to the spot on his shoulder. All things considered, it isn’t the worst thing.

Buck rolls his eyes and wipes at it valiantly, fixing him with a glare. “What are you thinking about? You’ve been tense ever since we left San Angelo.”

Because it’s just his luck that Buck would read him, even dead to the world. Eddie simply shakes his head and turns towards the window, ignoring the sudden chill that’s overcome his side. His knee starts bouncing again, even with Buck’s hand weighing it down.

It takes a while for Buck to reluctantly let go of him, but he trades it by scooting close enough for the entire line of their bodies to press together as much as possible. The proximity makes Eddie relax some, but he can still feel the annoying vibration crawling up the back of his neck and the cavern steadily opening up in his chest, the anxiety making his blood sluggish in his veins.

He’s so tired of the way his mind races, gets ahead of him, leaves him in the dust.

“Why don’t you try to get some sleep?” Buck suggests gently.

If he sleeps, he’s going to dream.

Eddie shakes his head again and turns towards Buck. “It’s okay, I’m fine. Just thinking about something.”

More like he’s thinking about everything under the sun.

Naturally, Buck doesn’t look convinced, but he stays quiet. Eddie knows better than anyone that Buck’s going to yank it out of him eventually, but he isn’t willing to go deep into exactly why he’s two seconds from crawling out of his skin in front of everyone, sleeping or not.

Not when he’s one strong wind away from shattering to pieces.

* * *

Eddie hasn’t been back here since he left El Paso the first time.

He’s got his reasons for that, obviously, but as he takes in the quaint house, trying to see it from the eyes of his crew, he wonders exactly what they see of it.

His parents are already waiting for them outside, Eddie having texted him as soon as they hit the city. He can see their wide smiles in the form of bunched cheeks on top of their masks, and as much as they’ve had their differences, Eddie’s missed them.

He steps forward to exchange a private greeting with them, tears pricking at the corners of his eyes from having to stay away while the rest of the crew stand straight behind them, as if they’re doing line-ups. His parents’ nosy neighbors are already coming outside their houses, wondering what the commotion is, and whoever parked a LAFD firetruck in the middle of El Paso nowhere. 

It would be a funny image if Eddie wasn’t so strung tight.

Not everyone’s staying. There’s a bag of food sitting next to his father’s feet that’s passed to Jacobs. Only Eddie, Buck and Hen planned to spend a couple hours at the house with his parents, everyone else declining the invitation in favour of going to a popular steakhouse that Eddie had recommended. It made sense, given that Eddie himself hardly knew them — would’ve made for too many uncomfortable situations.

It’s not until the firetruck is out of view that Buck comes up first, being the most familiar with them. His mom instantly recognizes the name from all of Christopher’s tales, before she realizes that she’d met him far before that. Eddie smiles at the flush that crawls up Buck’s face and the pleased glint that kisses his eyes. Hen comes up next, all of them doing their best to keep enough distance away from them.

While the rest of the pleasantries continue, Eddie studies the rest of the house he grew up in.

He can see the imprints of his childhood everywhere. There are scuff marks embedded in the cement from Eddie and Sophia riding their bikes through still-wet cement. There are his mom’s flower bushes, a couple new potted plants along the porch that Eddie doesn’t remember being there. There’s a bike balanced along the side of the point that has to belong to Adriana’s daughter, and he already sees his sister’s car parked in the driveway.

The yellow exterior of the house has been brushed up some, shining brightly without the dirt smudges that’d previously lined the paneling, but Eddie looks towards the spot he’d sat with his son three years ago, making yet another big decision in a whole line of them.

_ “You know, I was thinking about taking another trip, and I was wondering...maybe, if you wanted to come with me?” _

_ “Together?” _

_ “Together.” _

Eddie repeats those words in his head like a mantra sometimes. 

For all that he’d been absent while Chris was growing up, Chris never seemed to have a problem immediately coming to him for anything, and for that, Eddie’s forever grateful. That trust is something Eddie doesn’t take for granted, no matter that he’s the adult in this situation. He  _ wants  _ his child to be able to come to him, unlike the way Eddie grew up. He knows how important that trust will be as Chris grows up.

“Eddie.” Buck’s voice registers belatedly, and by the time Eddie turns to look at him again, the concerned crease is already present between his brows, again. There’s a silent question in the wrinkles that expression puts on Buck’s face, so Eddie humors him.

This, at least, he can share.

He points at where he can almost see his younger self sitting with his seven-year-old, still hurt and taken aback from his parents’ words. “Chris and I decided to move to LA sitting over there.”

_ “We think he should live with us, permanently.” _

_ “Don’t drag him down with you, Eddie.” _

The reminder sours the memory, and only cements the fact that he’s happy to be back without Christopher, knowing that it’d be just another argument about how Eddie’s no good for him. He can complete this visit without the fear of his parents taking Chris away from him, and he can take another three years before coming back.

But even with those barbed words echoing in his ears, Eddie remembers asking his kid if he’s ever missed him, putting the uncharacteristically vulnerable question in front of him and hoping that he wasn’t about to hear something he’d never bounce back from. 

_ “I miss you all the time.” _

The promise he’d made Chris — to never leave him — is set in stone, as far as Eddie’s concerned. 

Buck takes it all of this in stride, the way he always does, and slings an arm over his shoulder. “Well you better eat quick so we can get back home. I miss the little man.”

That startles a laugh out of him, and he leads the way to the backyard, where his parents have set up a spread as distanced as possible. “The little man has talked to you more than he’s talked to me in the past three days.”

“Yeah well, that’s what you get when you’re gallivanting with your new friends, Edmundo,” he teases back, eyes sparkling. 

“Where’d you learn the word ‘gallivanting?’” Eddie counters with a laugh. Buck pulls a face in response. 

There’s a partition set up in the middle of the backyard for them so they can eat without putting each other at risk. Hen’s already seated and laughing with his mom over something, while his father’s standing at the grill, interjecting every once in a while. Hen waves the two of them over, and Buck bounds off to meet her with a clap to Eddie’s shoulder. He moves to follow but the call of his name stops him.

“Eddie!” He has about a second of warning before he’s faced with a brightly-grinning Adriana, bouncing on the heels of her boots as she crosses her arms over her chest, presumably to stop reaching for him. He shoves his own hands in his pockets for the same reason. 

“Hey, did you come down just for this?” He smiles, searching for Adriana’s daughter, Izzy in the backyard.

“Come down? I live fifteen minutes away,” she snorts. Her smile fades as she takes him in. “You look exhausted, Eddie.”

His own smile falters, but he tries to make light of it. “You try fighting wildfires after a twenty hour ride in that firetruck with those people.” He jerks a thumb towards where the truck had just been parked.

Adriana, being the eldest, has a knack for reading him and Sophia well. He’d always hated it growing up, and he hates it even now. She doesn’t look the least bit convinced by his words, but Eddie distracts her by proclaiming hunger, even if food is the furthest thing from his mind.

“Is that Mom’s mashed potatoes?”

* * *

Eddie should’ve known it would come up, but at some point, the helicopter blaze is mentioned, having come up in the news.

Hen, one of the strongest people he knows, keeps the conversation light despite being the one who nearly died, but Eddie’s parents are already looking at him. He can feel their gaze on him periodically from where he’s seated next to Buck, the smallest amount of food on his plate.

Whatever little appetite Eddie had managed to muster from somewhere evaporates in thin air. Clearly he’s not the only one thinking about his own helicopter accident, and if Buck and Hen weren’t thinking of it before, they definitely are now. 

For a long minute, Eddie wishes that they would all stop looking at him.

He pulls a trick he hasn’t since he was nine years old and runs the back of his spoon along his food, smearing it across the plate slightly to make it look like he’d eaten more than he actually has.

“Stop doing that,” Buck mutters from besides him. “Chris does it better than you.”

“You do what you have to,” Eddie whispers back, setting the plate down. Christopher does manage to do it better than him, convincing everyone except Eddie, who’d pulled the exact same tricks as a kid.

His friend just glares at him, pointing at it and keeping his voice low. “You’re gonna finish that plate. It’s only a little bit, but you haven’t eaten a single thing in God knows how long.”

Eddie mutters a few curse words under his breath, but listens to him. Ignoring Buck’s self-satisfied smirk, he shovels food into his mouth that settles in his mouth like sand and stomach like lead. 

There’s a nostalgia to being here right now, with his parents and their cooking and two of his closest friends. Eddie just wished he could enjoy it more.

The conversation flows back and forth between everyone easily, Eddie managing to summon enough energy to participate as well.

“Hey, you’re the photographer niece, aren’t you?” Buck asks Izzy, who beams at him and begins teaching him how to make photos look good. Buck hangs onto every word, his ease with kids seeping through, and on the other side of him, Hen snorts.

“Last time you tried giving him tips, the man nearly burst a vessel.” The story had spread like wildfire, much to Chim’s glee and Buck’s chagrin.

“I repeated what Izzy said, I wasn’t saying anything new,” Eddie shrugs. “Chim’s the one who asked, and Buck’s the one who thought the calendar pictures were done by a professional.”

Buck has the decency to blush as Izzy’s smile only gets wider. Eddie knows that this entire interaction has made her whole night. Adriana’s told him how Izzy’s looking into photography, and that it’s her way of expressing herself, the way art is Christopher’s.

“Christopher and Denny have Buck wrapped around their little fingers,” Hen laughs. Eddie chimes his agreement, remembering the coffee maker sitting unboxed in his house. Hen delves into the Christmas tale from last year while Buck protests wildly at being picked on. 

Eddie sits back and listens, the anxious energy simmering down slightly as Hen and Buck trade off stories, Adriana piping in with the horror stories of Izzy as a kid, much to the teen’s protest.

“All this is great...but I have Eddie as a teen.”

Eddie doesn’t think Buck’s moved faster in his  _ life _ . Hen nudges him and Eddie rolls his eyes as his best friend leans forward to where his mom has a bunch of childhood photos saved on her phone, holding it up to the partition. 

He’s never living this down.

Eddie focuses more on Buck’s and his father’s boisterous laughter than he does the remnants of the pictures his mother is showing them. He doesn’t want to look at that boy right now...he’s not sure what happened, but Eddie isn’t him anymore.

Parts of him have always felt like he’s grown up far too fast. Maybe that’s a product of all the twists and turns his life has taken to bring him here, at thirty-three, learning to live and be truly happy again.

“Spill it, Eddie,” Hen whispers when everyone’s thoroughly distracted by the picture of Sophia’s shocking green hair after Eddie replaced her shampoo. “You’ve been quiet all day.”

“Just tired,” he says. “Remind me to check your vitals one last time before we get into the truck.”

It’s Hen’s turn to roll her eyes. “Look, I know the helicopter going down probably...didn’t do you any favours. But you don’t have to feel guilty for it, just because you think I need something. It’s hard to see any of us in that position, and triggers are tricky. I know you and Buck did everything you could to find me, which, if I had to take a wild guess, is a luxury you didn’t have.”

It wasn’t, but he doesn’t tell her that.

Eddie stays silent as they wrap up their dinner, getting up to help his parents move the dishes back into the house. He’s apprehensive about being in the same space as them without a buffer, the walls of the house looking much like a barrier to lock him in for interrogation.

“Eddie.”

There it is.

Eddie winces to himself but turns to face his parents from across the kitchen. “Yeah, Mom.”

“Do you think it’s safe like this?” She could be talking about any number of things with the way the past year has gone. “You left Christopher in an unknown city while you came right back to Texas to fight these fires. Eddie, it could’ve been you in that helicopter.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he leaves the latter part of the sentence alone. “I left him with Abuela and Pepa, not alone. And LA’s not an unknown city, we’ve been living there for three years. It’s more familiar to him than El Paso.”

“I told you there were fires in Texas,” his father intervenes. “Maybe it’s time you come back. You drove all this way to be here anyway, Eddie. You didn’t even think about what would happen to Christopher when you apparently signed up for this.”

Their disapproval is something that Eddie has come to terms with vaguely — no matter what he does, he’s never going to make them happy. But with the mood he’s in, the strength with which he misses Christopher, and the close call with the helicopter, he can feel himself spiraling further and further into self-doubt.

Still, he drags up the same defense he normally uses, unwilling to let them see how much their words get to him. “He’s  _ my  _ kid, not yours. There’s not a single second I don’t think about him doing this job. I know you two don’t think much of my parenting, but Christopher, even if something happened to me, would never go to you. I want him to grow up just like any other kid, without being told he can’t do certain things, without being coddled.”

“We just want to see him safe, why is that such a bad thing?” A headache begins to build at the base of his skull. 

“Being called in for special fires is a rare chance, Mom. Most of us have been signed up for these ever since we joined the department. This is the first time any of us have been called out like this. Some of those firefighters have been with the department for more than ten years.” He doesn’t mention that he’d signed up mostly for the money, because that would be another point against him in their books. “Christopher  _ is  _ safe; I do everything in my power to keep him that way. He is fine where he is. My kid’s happy, and so am I.”

Before they can say anything, there’s a knock on the door. Buck’s holding up the other dishes, and with a sinking dread, Eddie realizes the look in his eye means that he’s overheard part, if not all, of the conversation.

Helena doesn’t hesitate to morph her expression into the ever-charming hostess, jumping to take the dishes Buck sets down near the door. He smiles tightly at her, but catches Eddie’s eye and quirks a brow. Eddie gives him a minute shake of his head before turning back to look at his father.

“I know you don’t think much of it, but aside from Abuela, Pepa...I have family in LA. I have people who’ve had my back in situations no one else would’ve, two of which are sitting out there. And they’re the same ones who don’t look at Christopher as any different than the other kids, who I wouldn’t think twice about leaving him at a sleepover with, or doing anything with. Say what you want, Dad, but nothing’s ever going to convince me to come back here.”

Not even his own guilt.

* * *

Eddie steps into his childhood bedroom with no small amount of apprehension.

There’s very little of the things he loves in here now. It’s been nearly fifteen years since he’s moved out, but somehow, standing here now immediately transforms him back into the boy who had no clue what to make of his life.

Sometimes, he still feels like that boy, even if all other aspects of his younger self are long gone.

He knows he’s made a lot of things of himself. He’s a father to the best kid in the world, he’s been a combat medic, he’s been a husband — albeit not a very good one — and he’s a firefighter. He’s someone’s friend, another person’s partner...all these hats Eddie keeps stacking and doesn’t realize.

In some people’s point of views, he’s a hero. First a soldier in the army, and now a firefighter — he’s been in civil service for more than fifteen years at this point, but he’s never thought of himself as a hero. That word always seemed to be reserved for other people to use, not for him to define himself. Regardless, it’s still a hat to stack, even if he’s not the one who put it there.

It’s gratifying, in a sense, to stand here and look back at the sheer number of roles he’s played since then. Many of those roles have come with the most painful parts of his life, the parts he’s still struggling with, but without them Eddie doesn’t really think he’d be the man he is. So as much as sometimes he wishes he could take an eraser and pencil in new lines for the way his life is set out, he doesn’t think he could actually go through with it.

There’s a small box of his belongings here. When they’d packed up the house, Eddie had left this one box of things that he hadn’t wanted to take with him to LA.

He pilfers through them now, finding a stack of embarrassing photos that no one deserves to see, old trinkets, a few files and remnants from the Army that he has no need for before he stumbles across the original copy of his medical records.

The very thing that’d brought him home.

The discharge forms have his information listed in neat, loopy handwriting. Christine had been the nurse who discharged him. At the time, she’d worked for the military hospital base for fifteen years, and had a daughter who was in the process of applying to PA school.

Eddie thinks this is a part of himself he’s grateful for; he remembers people, no matter how short his interactions with them may have been. All these people that, on the surface, may seem insignificant in changing the course of his life, but deeper, they’ve changed his perspective on many things. Christine had been one of those people, who’d put steel into his backbone for going back to face his wife and child.

And not to mention how much easier it is to spill some of these things to strangers who he’ll most likely never meet again.

He pulls the scans out of the file, holding them up to the light and studying them. The X-rays had just been looking for any shrapnel and bullet casings that they might’ve missed during the preliminary first aid, but his wrist had shown the most damage. 

Enough scar tissue had accumulated from the injury that it increased the pressure in the joint, leaving him with a depleted range of motion. It didn’t impact anything, but days where he had to be more dexterous than normal, the pressure would only increase, pressing nerves that would send stabbing bolts of pain through his hand.

His shoulder is still a work in progress sometimes, even though he’d gotten lucky that the bullet hadn’t torn a tendon. He still requires physical therapy on it sometimes, but it’s much better than he’d initially thought it would be. 

Looking at the scan in his hand, Eddie once again takes in the fact that a mere two inches could’ve made the difference between coming home bruised and battered, or coming home in a box. Let alone the sheer survival chance of a helicopter plummeting, but with people shooting at them left and right, bullets flying fast and too hard to track and the engine blowing up in close proximity, the awareness that luck had clearly been on their side once again engulfs him.

He remembers the horrible moments where he’d been so sure that he was going to die out there, alone and filled with regrets. He remembers pulling out the small, compact photo with his kid on it, running a bloody thumb over the edges, sitting there past the sand bank apologizing over and over and over again, hoping it would reach his family somehow.

Just as the certainty of bleeding out in an unknown part of the desert set in, their rescue had come through for them. He remembers pressing that photo to his lips as sobs of relief wracked his body, embedded as it was with three bullets that could’ve taken him away from it all. 

He still has that photo tucked away in his wallet; it serves him well as a reminder of the things he’s made it through, and why he needs to make it through on the days he feels like he can’t. 

A knock on the doorframe pulls him from his thoughts, and Eddie looks up to find Buck standing there, fidgeting in place. “Hey.”

“Hi, Buck,” Eddie replies, setting the scan down. “What are you doing here?”

“You mom said I could find you here. The other firefighters finished eating so they’re wondering if they should come back for us or give us another hour.” Buck waves his phone at him.

If they gave them another hour, Eddie would have to listen to another stream of why he’s not doing enough. And anyway, the sooner they got on the road, the sooner they would get back. He shakes his head. “Nah, they can come back for us.”

Buck nods and quickly types out a reply to whoever asked the question. “What are you doing?”

He gestures to the strewn trinkets in an open invitation. “Just looking at some of the stuff I left here. I didn’t need any of this stuff in LA, so I asked my parents to keep it.”

Buck joins him, picking up one of the photos. It’s a picture from middle school and Eddie cringes just looking at it. “I always knew you were a frosted-tips kinda guy.”

“Shut up,” he grumbles, sliding the scan he’d just been looking at back in the folder to pick up another one. This one is of his leg, where there’d been more shrapnel embedded than anywhere else because of the helicopter explosion. He can trace some of those on his hip even now, with raised scars marking the spot, distinguishing it from the stretch marks that decorate the skin.

When he looks up, Buck’s staring at the scans with an expressionless look on his face, the photo in his hand completely forgotten. “Is that...is that from your last tour?”

Eddie hands them over, unsure of where Buck’s mind just took him. “Yeah, I was just looking at them. I have electronic copies of all of them but I didn’t want to take these home where Chris could find it. The Silver Star and my dog tags are pretty much the only things I took with me from my deployment.”

He doesn’t mention that he hadn’t wanted his parents to display the medal in the shadow box someone had gifted them during Eddie’s homecoming. He’s only recently come to terms with the medal, six years after he got it, and yet, no part of him holds his head higher for it. 

He was doing his job, plain and simple.

Buck carefully places the scans back where they belong. Eddie’s still disconcerted because he can’t get a read on what his best friend’s thinking, but he figures that if Buck’s hiding it from him, there’s probably a good reason behind it.

“It was risky, what you and TK did,” Eddie says quietly, seizing the small amount of privacy they have until they reach LA, even if his words come out apropos of nothing. Buck opens his mouth to protest, but Eddie shakes his head. “Buck, if we’d been twenty seconds late in realizing both of you were missing, you would’ve been out there, alone.”

“I wasn’t, I had…” Even as he tries to say that he had TK with him, Eddie knows Buck doesn’t believe it. It’s the unsure cadence of his voice, the way he steals his gaze away from Eddie.

As awesome as the 126 is, Eddie, Buck and Hen don’t actually know any of them. In their line of work, they have to trust everybody to do their jobs, but it’s hard to know if the person they’re paired up with will stay behind if things fall apart. It’s hard to know if their focus is exclusive to the victims, or to everyone.

Buck and Eddie have curated this partnership over the past three years, one brick at a time. Not once have they left each other in the dust on a call, and Eddie doesn’t know if he trusts any other person to do the same. It’s a risk he isn’t willing to take with Buck, when he can help it.

Truth be told, Eddie can’t really settle on an emotion for how he feels about Buck going off and doing reckless things without him, given that he’s always been the one Buck comes to first about them. The idea of him being out there without someone that doesn’t know the way he works is even more disconcerting than him pairing up with a stranger, even though Eddie immediately feels stupid for it.

Initially, they’d had to split their resources. The strike team had needed a medic urgently, and Eddie hadn’t been assigned on anything. He’d immediately offered his assistance with a cavalier mention of the Army, and Judd had him packing his stuff faster than he could blink.

He’d seen the uncertainty in Buck’s expression once he found out that Eddie wasn’t coming with him, and he couldn’t lie and say that he hadn’t been apprehensive about Buck going to the fire line alone. But they didn’t have the luxury of choosing what to do at a show they weren’t running. 

Eddie sighs, rubbing his forehead. “I was...when I didn’t see you anywhere, I was terrified even though I know you’re amazing at your job. It’s just hitting me a little harder today how willingly we throw ourselves in the line of fire, and then step outside of that to take even more risks.”

“Does it have something to do with what your parents were saying?” Buck asks tentatively. Eddie snorts and shakes his head.

“No, they say that every time I see them, no matter what circumstances I see them in. It’s just seeing the helicopter go down...tells me I’m not as over it as I thought I was.”

“Was it like that for you?”

Eddie picks his words carefully, speaking low and slow. “I don’t want to say it was better or worse, but it’s not a sight you think you’ll see multiple times in your life, you know? Once was more than enough. And the thought of people you love stuck in the same predicament you were once in, the same situation you didn’t think you’d come out of alive? It’s scary, Buck.”

“Because you knew what was going through her mind.”

He shrugs, neither confirming nor denying. “I think we all did, right? We’ve all been in situations we thought we wouldn’t make it out of.” Buck nods understandingly, his gaze going distant. 

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he says after a while. “I just didn’t want to risk putting you in a compromising position if I didn’t have to, not with a kid waiting for you to come back home.”

“But that’s the thing, right? I’m your partner, and you’re mine. We’ve always worked better as a team than alone, and in a fire like this, you need all the help you can get. You think Chris would want me to come back home without you? You think  _ I  _ would’ve wanted to go back?” He didn’t mean to derail like that, but he doesn’t raise his voice. At his best friend’s wide-eyed look, he takes a breath and fixes him with a look. “Was I pissed? Absolutely. Would I have left you to field it on your own? Never.”

Buck shakes his head quickly. “I never thought you would.”

The conversation fizzles out after that, both of them having said their piece. Eddie turns his attention back to the medical record files, staring at his name printed on the label. 

_ Edmundo Diaz _

_ Staff Sergeant, US Army _

It’s funny to see that title stamped next to his name, because he hasn’t been that in a long time. It’s basically a rendition of one of the hats Eddie’s stacked up, trawling through the ranks to hit Staff Sergeant. He wasn’t even Staff Sergeant for a full six months before his discharge, and yet, he somehow has claim to the rank.

Strong fingers encircle his wrist and pull him away from the photos and files before he can spiral further, turning him to face his best friend.

“Look,” Buck begins. “I know you have a copy of all of this stuff at home, but you left these original copies here for a reason. There are probably days where you’re at the point where you can look at them with...without going to where your mind is right now; today is probably not one of them. I can hear your thoughts loud and clear ever since we left San Angelo, even while I was asleep, and maybe...it’s not a good idea to put yourself through all of these things over and over again. Especially not now.”

There’s a hidden plea somewhere in Buck’s tone, and before Eddie knows what he’s doing, he’s agreeing to what Buck’s asked of him. “Okay. Just...give me a minute?”

Buck squeezes his hand and nods, smiling widely. “I’ll wait downstairs.”

Eddie turns back to the box, looking it over. Buck’s right; he left this stuff here for a reason. Not only did he not want these things in the home he was building with his son, but each of these things (except the stack of photos; those are just embarrassing) reminds him of a string of things he doesn’t want to be reminded of. They’re all interconnected into sticky webs that trap the most difficult parts of his lives into an unmovable blockade in Eddie’s mind. Sometimes, those webs curl into a lump in his throat, rendering him incapable of asking for help.

Sometimes, he doesn’t know how to move past them. But for now, what he can do is close this box up, take a deep breath, and join Buck and Hen downstairs.

He packs everything away just as it was before he opened it, closing the top and resting a hand on some of the biggest turning points in his life.

With a slight smile, Eddie leaves the room, his smile widening as he catches sight of Buck at the bottom of the stairs. Hen shoots him a mocking glare, tapping at her watch just as the sound of their firetruck’s tires crunching on gravel echoes through the backyard.

As they say goodbye, Eddie turns back to look at the porch, where the ghosts of him and his son’s past self sit. With the gleam of the 118 on the truck behind him, Eddie’s struck with the confirmation that moving to LA was the best thing he’d ever done for both of them.

“Let’s go, Eddie,” Buck calls from the driver’s side window. Eddie waves to his family one last time before swinging himself into the seat next to Buck.

“Let’s go.”

He’s made it past all those things, even when he thought he wouldn’t.

Now, the only way to go...is forward. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope y'all liked this! :)
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at [zeethebooknerd](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/zeethebooknerd) or on Twitter at [tkreyesevandiaz](https://twitter.com/tkreyesevandiaz).


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